


after the disco

by attheborder



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: First Kiss, Having Emotions At The Tadfield Airbase, Love Confessions, M/M, POV Outsider
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-13
Updated: 2019-11-13
Packaged: 2021-01-29 23:00:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21418093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/attheborder/pseuds/attheborder
Summary: “Youareclever. Admit it.”Aziraphale let the sword fall from his palm, and raised his empty hand to rub at his face. “Oh, but I’m not,” he said with great passion, his eyes falling shut in what looked like pain. “Crowley, I was so blind—“Two men, two women, three children, and one entire dog were watching this bit of domestic drama unfold, yet neither Crowley nor Aziraphale seemed capable of realizing they had an audience. It was as if they were the only people in each others’ universes.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 100
Kudos: 1107
Collections: Good Omens Kink Meme





	after the disco

**Author's Note:**

> [original prompt!](https://good-omens-kink.dreamwidth.org/616.html?thread=1373288#cmt1373288) my personal hobbies include going on the kink meme and find the least kinky prompts of all time to fill.

“Get in,” said Mr. Young.  
  
“But my bike—“  
  
“One of your friends can take it home for you. Now, get in the car, your mother is worried sick waiting at home—“  
  
“Just let me get Dog, then—“  
  
“No dogs in the car without a carrier, I’ve told you! Get _in,_ Adam.”  
  
The boy was bundled, businesslike, into the car, barely able to spare an apologetic glance back at everyone else. The car puttered away across the glossy tarmac of the airbase and the dog, from its seat by Pepper’s feet, whined in confusion.  
  
“It’s all right,” said Pepper to Dog, even though she wasn’t altogether sure it really was.  
  
The car disappeared around the gate, and in the hollow silence that it left, Pepper found herself exchanging slow and meaningful looks with her remaining friends, before moving on to examining everyone else.  
  
Over there was the victim of the patriarchy and her unworthy choice of mate. There was the smelly old man and the orange-haired lady with the very cool dress. And both of those couples were staring, in turn, at the final and most unusual pair that had joined the party at the end of the world.  
  
The blonde one, the one Adam had yanked right out of the orange-haired lady as if he’d been pulling apart sweets that had melted together, was staring up at his friend, the one who had— well, Pepper wasn’t _quite_ sure what the one in black had done, but it had helped Adam help them all, so she knew she ought to be grateful for it. And his friend was staring back, or at least Pepper assumed he was, through those glasses of his.  
  
“Crowley,” said the blonde one slowly. He was still holding the sword, though it was no longer wreathed in flame. Pepper felt a twinge of loss; for a moment she missed the weight of it in her hand, hungered for it, and then as soon as she recognized that hunger enough to be terrified by it, it disappeared like a dream.  
  
“Aziraphale,” said the red-haired one— Crowley.  
  
“It’s over?”  
  
“Think so.”  
  
Aziraphale raised the sword in his hand and let the blade rest in the palm of the other, testing its weight.  
  
“You had me going for a second there,” said Crowley, nodding at the sword.  
  
Aziraphale looked confused, for a moment, and then startled with a small, embarrassed laugh. “Oh,” he said, “yes, quite. I’m sorry, my dear, it was just— well it was rather the worst thing I could think of to threaten you with. I don’t know what that says about me. That I’m soft, sentimental—“  
  
“It worked, didn’t it?”  
  
“I suppose it did.”  
  
“You _are_ clever. Admit it.”  
  
Aziraphale let the sword fall from his palm, and raised his empty hand to rub at his face. “Oh, but I’m not,” he said with great passion, his eyes falling shut in what looked like pain. “Crowley, I was so blind—“  
  
Two men, two women, three children, and one entire dog were watching this bit of domestic drama unfold, yet neither Crowley nor Aziraphale seemed capable of realizing they had an audience. It was as if they were the only people in each others’ universes.  
  
What had Aziraphale said, when Anathema had asked him to explain everything? Pepper had been listening. She was a very good listener, especially when adults were talking. She’d long found that it was when adults didn’t think you were listening, or didn’t think you’d understand them even if you were, that they said the most interesting things.  
  
_He was a wily serpent, and I was technically on apple tree duty—_  
  
It was pretty obtuse, but thanks to Pepper’s long-endured suffering at Tadfield Parish Church’s Sunday school, she was pretty sure she had the gist of it. The Garden of Eden. The frumpy little man in the bow-tie was the angel who’d been set to guard the Eastern Gate with a flaming sword. His skinny friend had been the very snake to tempt Eve into eating the apple that gave her, and all of humanity, knowledge of good and evil.  
  
Despite what her pastor had said, Pepper had always kind of suspected the snake had had the right idea about things. Without knowledge, without humanity ever leaving Eden, so many wonderful things wouldn’t exist. Bicycles, for one, and chapter books, and computer games, and fast cars…  
  
On this basis, Pepper decided she was fond of Crowley, and she wanted him to be happy. He deserved to be.  
  
The sword fell to the ground with a clatter as Aziraphale’s hands reached out to clutch at Crowley’s arms. “—I was so _blind,_ Crowley, I really thought the Almighty would—“  
  
“Shhh, s’alright,” said Crowley, shushing Aziraphale for the second time that evening, bidding him quiet as he held him awkwardly at arms’ length. “Doesn’t matter now, does it? I got here. You got here. We did it— well, _he_ did it, but we helped, angel, I don’t plan on giving up _all_ the credit to the boy—“ His voice was straining with false jubilance, threatening to crack.  
  
Aziraphale’s hands were fisted in Crowley’s sleeves, but it seemed as if Crowley was afraid to take Aziraphale fully into his arms, despite Aziraphale seeming so obviously desperate to be held. Pepper thought she knew something about this, the way her father shook hands stiffly with all men but his closest mates, and even with them barely went in for things like hugs, and certainly not kisses.  
  
Pepper had never seen her father cry. She’d never seen any grown man cry, at that, and wondered if she was about to for the first time. Then she got a bit lost in the weeds wondering how old Crowley and Aziraphale even _were,_ and if they even counted as men, because she’d aways figured that angels and suchlike, being spiritual creatures, were outside such petty human norms as gender, but these guys did look awfully, well, guy-like, not divinely androgynous at all, really, well, there was Crowley’s odd little necklace thing, but that could just be a fashion choice, though a pretty darn silly one, at that…  
  
By the time she refocused on the scene before her, things had progressed. The tables seemed to have turned, in some imperceptible way, some balance between the two of them shifted in the opposite direction. One of Aziraphale’s hands was hovering at the side of Crowley’s face, as though he wanted nothing more than to take off those glasses, but wouldn’t dare to impose.  
  
“Crowley, are— are you alright?”  
  
Crowley let loose a small sniffle, and Pepper internally fist-pumped. _That’s right, let it out!_ she thought. She was already planning the lovely great big cry she’d have later that night, and was preparing the strict instructions she’d give to Brian, Wensley, and Adam (if he could be gotten ahold of) to do the same.  
  
“S’just,” Crowley began, and then he removed his shades, and Pepper could see Aziraphale swell with relief at the sight of what, to her, were the mildly terrifying eyes of a snake. But anything could become beautiful, if you knew it long enough. “S’just that, you know. I thought you were gone, for a bit. I don’t know how much of me you could see in that bar, but—“  
  
“You weren’t doing well,” said Aziraphale. “Sitting there, waiting for the world to end.”  
  
Crowley let out a sound that might’ve been a laugh, and then shook his head. “I thought you were gone, and I’d never get to—“  
  
“Never get to…?” prompted Aziraphale gently.  
  
“You can walk away,” said Crowley, after a beat. “You can walk away, and not have to hear this.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“If you want it to stay the same, between us—“ Crowley broke off. He lifted a hand and placed it gently on Aziraphale’s shoulder. “If you want it to go on just as it has. Me, and you. Hereditary enemies, like you said. Meetings in the park every few months. Dinner once a year, wine when you’re in the mood. I know even that’s been a lot to ask. So if that’s what you want, you can go, and I’ll just say my part to this lot, and they’ll keep it from you, if I ask them to, I won’t give them a choice. Because it’s got to come out, Aziraphale, I’m sorry, but it does, after all that. It’s got to.”  
  
Pepper felt her heart flutter in her chest. She hadn't thought that the serpent knew that they were all still there. She spared a glance to Brian beside her. He wore an odd expression; a mixture of lingering relief and fear, left over from the events of hours prior, accompanied by a kind of gleaming anticipation of the type that preceded a victory in a video game. Pepper realized she must have looked much the same, as she awaited Aziraphale’s reply.  
  
She looked back at the pair of them. Aziraphale was pressing his own hand atop Crowley’s at his shoulder, running a soft, wide finger across the bony mantle of Crowley’s knuckles.  
  
“I’m— I’m not going anywhere,” he said. “Please. Crowley, please, tell me.”  
  
Crowley swallowed visibly, and brought his other hand, shaking, to Aziraphale’s face.  
  
“I wasn’t sitting there, waiting for the world to end. For me, with you gone, it already had.”  
  
“Crowley—“  
  
“I love you, Aziraphale.” The words tumbled from Crowley’s lips like jewels.  
  
“Silly,” said Aziraphale softly, and Crowley froze for a moment before Aziraphale went on, clarifying, “silly old me, I’m only now realizing that I wanted to be the one to say it first. Bit late for that, isn’t it. But I guess it’s only fair. You’ve always been one step ahead of me. I don’t know what I’d do without you, leading the way. Tempting me, every time. But let it be known,” Aziraphale said, smiling so brightly now Pepper felt nearly blinded, he really _was_ an angel, gosh, “that I always wanted you to.”  
  
“That all?” said Crowley, very quietly.  
  
“It is not, you serpent, let me finish. Well, I hadn’t much left anyway, I suppose I— oh, to Hell with it. Oh, Crowley, I love you, so dearly—”  
  
And then they were kissing, skipping right over the chaste brush of the lips that Pepper always imagined to be the most appropriate type of first kiss, directly into something far deeper and more passionate. Crowley’s hands came up to clutch the back of Aziraphale’s head, long fingers digging into white curls, and Aziraphale was pressing his entire body to the skinny curve of Crowley’s, fitting against him perfectly, convex to concave.  
  
It had only been a few months ago that Pepper, upon witnessing a loving kiss in some soppy romance film her mother had dragged her to, had loudly moaned “Ewwww!!!” in the crowded theater, disrupting the climactic scene by causing a wave of giggles, embarrassing her mother, and earning her a spate of extra chores that night.  
  
But she wasn’t tempted to cringe away from this display of mature affection, like she’d been compelled to that night out of instinctive disgust. She was instead entranced by this kiss, moved by it, even. Above all of the grown-up meanings and theological implications and questions raised by this very sight, the guardian and the serpent entwined, skin to skin standing on the hard ground of an Oxfordshire airbase, there was simply the most beautiful, blossoming feeling of _love_ Pepper had ever felt, and you didn’t have to be grown up at all to understand that.  
  
She looked from side to side. Wensley had a hand over his heart. Brian had tears in his eyes. Off to the left, the orange-haired woman was leaning her head on the shoulder of the smelly old man. Off to the right, Anathema was standing hand in hand with her overgrown boy. And down at Pepper’s feet, Dog was looking up at her. She crouched to pet him, glancing back up at Crowley and Aziraphale to check that they were still kissing (they were).  
  
“I know,” she said to Dog, “I wish Adam could see this too. He loves a good happy ending. I’ll just have to tell him all about it. I’ll tell him they were using tongues.”  
  
  
***  
  
  
“Drinks at mine?” Pepper heard Anathema ask brightly, as the adults wandered away from Them towards the exit of the airbase. “I just stocked up on wine.”  
  
“And, may I ask, dear girl, how much did you pay for this wine?” asked Aziraphale primly.  
  
“I don’t know, like, fifteen pounds? Still kind of getting the hang of the money here...”  
  
Aziraphale looked over at Crowley, and they exchanged identical sighs.  
  
“It’ll have to do,” Crowley said, and then he put his arm around Aziraphale, and then they were too far away to hear anymore, but Pepper could still see their backs, and she certainly saw Aziraphale’s hand wander down to Crowley’s arse and give it a squeeze.  
  
_Adults sure are weird,_ Pepper thought, as she efficiently directed Brian and Wensleydale to maneuver Adam’s bike between them to bring home to him, Dog secure in its basket.  
  
“Hey, Pepper,” said Brian. “Who are those guys, anyway?” Brian did not, as far as Pepper knew, go to Sunday school.  
  
Pepper thought for only a moment before answering, “Well, obviously, they’re _lovers.”_

***

**Author's Note:**

> come yell at me on tumblr :) [@areyougonnabe](http://areyougonnabe.tumblr.com)


End file.
